last post, some pieces i don't want to forget

lip-synching with alessandra some song neither of us knew in the back seat of the cab, doing our best bollywood duet, lips moving in fake hindi shapes, eyes expressing, heads bobbing. making cohdi and laura laugh.

...

shirtless young boys, scabs and marks, no shoes, dirty hair, snotty faces, selling roses, knocking on our car window, eyes begging, patting their stomaches, some kind of crude mime gesture, hungry belly...feed me.

the guy with one leg, bouncing like a pogo stick, magazines in hand, seeling those, coming right up to our cab. hopping through the traffic, hop, hop, hop.

men with no legs at all rolling through the traffic on skate boards, pushing the hot pavement beneath them with their chapped hands. one of them, had some kind of hump on his back, maybe it was his shoulder blade, sticking way up, not how it should be.

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seeing horses in the park, grazing. playing with them, like in a scene, in kolkata. cohdi took video footage, running in circles, one of them jumped up on its hind legs to fend me off, too close to its child, too close. i run away.

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i had a 5 ruppee coin and i tossed it in the air and a young girl caught it and stuck her tongue out at her brothers. she smiled at me.

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a punjab man, hair rolled into a ball on his head, large cloth tire, a turban, tells us it's a "dry" night in delhi. no alcohol because there's an election in a few days, and it's the law that the city closes down it's bars and liquor stores. he says, you like rum? i have a friend...

we drive to the army base, where his cousin meets us on a scooter and hands us a bottle in a paper bag, he rides away, and our friend, the taxi driver, makes a cute gesture, like a child sneaking a snack in the middle of the night, tip-toeing away from the refrigerator, sssh, don't tell...

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getting a greeting card from our boys from across the street (from the slum, or "camp" called vivakenand) that says the most beautiful words. gulshin, one of the boys, is working on a book he tells me, about our circus, he hopes to have it published. they've been rehearsing their acrobatics everyday, they say, in the grass by their school. the card says: "you have shown us we can do anything. our world is a brighter place. we can deal with many tragedies. you are our great friends. never forget us too."

their camp, which has been around for over 30 years, is being bull-dozed over by the government in a matter of weeks. when i ask them about this they break into an english song they all know, i imagine one they learned at school, all these boys wearing the red shirts we made them, an image of india and the words in hindi and in english: circus across cultures...they all start singing and swaying together: "WHO KNOWS WHAT TOMORROW BRINGS..."

afterwards, one of the boys, says, "how? how, evan, do you make this your profession?" and it kills me to think that for these boys, in this society, i can't promise them that anything is possible. i say, "you work and you work, and you stay true to yourself and you do what you love. and if you keep that thing that you love with you always, your work won't be so bad. it might even become what you love."

they ask about my house back home, and i can't really justify the fact that we have three bathrooms, two levels, 200 channels on the t.v.

....


packing it all up. we get in the plane tonight. so many flashes of this trip. things i want to remember always. i will keep making notes like this. to keep it alive.

i arrive home on friday after a 22 hour flight. it's so hard to imagine.

india is a place that hides nothing of itself. it is like an open wound, totally exposed, every harsh reality. it's also incredibly beautiful and rich, and the people, so strong and connected to their family, to their sense of place.

a principal at one of the schools tells us about the street kids and how they are so amazing because they are so ready to learn, so enthusiastic, because they are in "the flow." when you live in poverty, you can't be a complainer. you can't resist it. you have to be in the flow to surrvive. so everywhere they are, they are present, alive and ready to adapt.

and they think we have it all.